Technical Field
This technology relates to high tenacity braided fishing lines having reduced braid density and excellent breaking strength, and to processes for making the lines.
Description of the Related Art
It is known to use light weight, high strength fibers in fishing line and rope applications. Polyethylene fibers in particular, such as SPECTRA® extended chain polyethylene fibers and yarns from Honeywell International Inc. of Morristown, N.J., are excellent materials for the fabrication of these structures because they have very high strength to weight performance. Particularly, fibers formed from ultra high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMW PE) are known to possess excellent tensile properties such as tenacity, tensile modulus and energy-to-break at very low deniers. Such high tenacity fibers are typically made by a “gel spinning” process, also referred to as “solution spinning.” In this type of process, a solution of ultra high molecular weight polyethylene and a solvent is formed, followed by extruding the solution through a multi-orifice spinneret to form solution filaments, cooling the solution filaments into gel filaments, and extracting the solvent to form dry filaments. These dry filaments are grouped into bundles which are referred to in the art as either “fibers” or “yarns.” The fibers/yarns are then stretched, i.e. drawn, up to a maximum drawing capacity to increase their tenacity.
Fishing lines comprising multifilament gel spun polyethylene fibers are typically made by braiding together a plurality of fibers. These multi-fiber, multi-filament fishing lines have superior strength compared to braided or monofilament fishing lines formed from other polymers, such as polyesters or nylons, so they have a lower tendency to break during use. Due to their superior strength, braided fishing lines may be fabricated with lower line diameters relative to monofilament fishing lines having the same strength. This is significant, for example, because thinner lines allow anglers to cast longer and load more line onto their rod spools compared to monofilament lines. Braided fishing lines are also preferable because they are more durable than monofilament lines and thus will last longer without breaking down due to the sun or heavy use, and they have less of a tendency to coil and tangle than monofilament line. Furthermore, the braided, multi-fiber, multifilament construction is preferable to monofilament fishing lines because the monofilament line types have a tendency to stretch during use, whereas the braided lines do not stretch or have very little stretch. In this regard, non-stretching or low stretch lines are often preferred over greater stretch lines because they give anglers a better feel when they have a bite on their hook and they make it easier to set the hook after a bite.
Although existing braided fishing lines offer excellent performance, there is an ongoing need for products having improved properties and performance. In this regard, it has been observed that the tenacity of a braided body will inherently be lower than the tenacities of the component fibers because the fibers in the braided body are coiled into a helix and therefore are not fully straight, thereby inhibiting exploitation of the full tensile strength of fibers. Additionally, it has been observed in typical braid constructions that increasing braid tightness (braid density), i.e. increasing the number of overlaps or “picks” along the length of the braided body, will decrease the tenacity of the braided body. It has now been unexpectedly found that the tenacity of certain braided bodies will actually not decrease, i.e. the tenacity will either stay the same or actually increase, up to a certain number of picks-per-inch before reverting back to the expected pattern of decreasing tenacity with increasing braid density. These braided bodies are provided herein.